The 1970s

Here’s a perspective on the 1970s I found interesting: The decade was so embarrassing that climbing out of the ’70s was a proud achievement.

The 1970s were America’s low tide. Not since the Depression had the country been so wracked with woe. Never — not even during the Depression — had American pride and self-confidence plunged deeper. But the decade was also, paradoxically, in some ways America’s finest hour. America was afflicted in the 1970s by a systemic crisis analogous to the one that struck Imperial Rome in the middle of the third century A.D. … But unlike the Romans, Americans staggered only briefly before the crisis. They took the blow. For a short time they behaved foolishly, and on one or two occasions, even disgracefully. Then they recouped. They rethought. They reinvented.